IN
HER ROLE to help maintain the cultural
identities of Jewish college students in
metro Atlanta, Heidi Berger
annually finds herself perplexed with
the attitudes of student journalists at
Georgia State University.

For
the third consecutive year, The Signal,
GSU's student-run newspaper, has run
an advertisement paid by Bradley
Smith's Committee
for Open Debate on the
Holocaust
that questions if the Holocaust really
happened.

Appearing
in the Sept. 8 edition, the ad offers
$250,000 to anyone who can arrange a
nationally televised debate between
CODOH
and the Anti-Defamation
League,
which combats anti-Semitism and other
forms of discrimination, on such issues as
whether gas chambers were used to
exterminate Jews and if "The Diary of
Anne Frank" is fiction, not
fact.

"We
believe and understand that this is not an
issue of free speech," said Berger, the
Metro Campus Program director for Atlanta
YAD, the Jewish Young Adult Agency. "But
this is ethically wrong. For a university
that talks about diversity, allowing an ad
to run like this doesn't reflect well on
them. People forget that Jewish students
are another type of minority
group."

Berger
said her organization has tried to talk
with representatives of The Signal,
but that the students who run it, "haven't
understood our perspective."

Jennifer
J. Smith, editor of The Signal, said
it isn't a matter of understanding a
perspective.

She
said The Signal's ad policy states
that ads will not be rejected because of
the political or personal views of the
person or group running it.

"It
is a noble thing not to offend anyone, but
the implication of picking and choosing
what you are going to run based on what
you like and identify with scares me very
much," Smith said.

Two
GSU Jewish student groups haven't met yet
this year, so there has been no discussion
of the ad, said Mark Budnitz, a law
professor and faculty adviser.

"Speaking
as an individual, I think a newspaper has
a greater obligation than printing
anything that someone pays for," he
said.

"This
was not a freedom of speech or debate
issue. This is just a bunch of scurrilous
charges that are creating bad feelings
among the student body."

But
Smith said only about 10 students have
asked her about the ad.

Jim
Scott, vice president for student
services at GSU, said the paper is
partially funded by the university through
student activity fees but "we can't tell
the paper what they can print and what
they can't print.

"We
sort of leave it to their judgment to make
the decision."

John
Day, director of diversity education
programs at GSU, said the incident can be
used to stimulate dialogue on
campus.

"Hopefully,
through the educational process, we will
help students understand different groups
and show them that this is offensive to
them."

WITH HIS tongue-in-cheek
offer of a quarter of a million dollars --
"tongue-in-cheek", altho' the funds are
actually there -- to any student who can
arrange the television confrontation,
Bradley Smith has hit the
traditional enemies of free speech at a
vulnerable place. He
has aroused curiosity, and thousands of
students are now surfing to his CODOH
Website to see what the fuss is all about.

They
are intellectually capable of making up
their own minds and, we say, good luck to
them.

The
above news item is reproduced without editing other
than typographical